Visakhapatnam : Healthcare startups fare well

We are now entering the era of non-invasive glucose monitoring, and with it the era of non-invasive health monitoring, in general.Visakhapatnam: At a time when an increasing number of startups are coming up, those focusing on healthcare coupled with IT are the ones on the rise in the port city. At least five startups from the port city are now in different stages of offering services in the healthcare sector by employing the assistance of information technology in Vizag.

The five startups in the healthcare sector include - Btwelve, HealthSaathi, Greenline, Osure and DoctorsConnect - which are incubated with the Startup Accelerator India (SAI). While Btwelve, HealthSaathi and Greenline are based out of Vizag, DoctorsConnect is virtually incubated in the port city and Osure is looking marketing its product for the US market.

While Btwelve is aiming to educate and spread awareness among people about vitamin B12, its deficiency, health implications and preventive measures for people to combat the deficiency, HealthSaathi is working towards providing digital solutions that can help speedy recovery for people by reminding them to take medication at regular intervals. In addition, HealthSaathi also aims to provide baby sitter and care taker services for the elderly in the city.

Meanwhile, Greenline aims at building sophisticated high end technology to make emergency services more efficient and effective and also to provide the right kind of applications to make hospital or medical management better, as per its vision.

At the same time, Osure is developing a unique device with high precision sensors that helps users track their body vitals such as heart rate, blood oxygen and stress-levels that works for all age groups. Apart from these DoctorsConnect is looking a providing a networking portal dedicated to the healthcare community, which results in a directory for people to take appointments from healthcare providers.

Apart from being home to a large retiree population, members of different startups opined that Vizag is an ideal destination for healthcare startups because of the diversity in demography of the residents, who are from different parts of the country, thanks to the multiple public sector undertakings and navy personnel.

Speaking to TOI, Raja Sekhar P of HealthSaathi said, "There is definitely a good market in Vizag specially when you want to test your product. But, the market size is not good enough if you want to scale it up and also from a revenue perspective as many of the people still feel that normal way of doing things is easier than doing it with technology."

Concurring, Ravi Teja of Btwelve said, "Vizag has a people from different places, who are settled here and there is no purchase pattern. If you are able to succeed in getting people to use your product in Vizag, then you can do it in almost any part of the country."